Above the stone city of Jiangdong.
The hot air balloons were like dark clouds... piled into a whole mass, like a thick iron plate, gradually sinking towards the ground, seeming to have covered the roof ridges, and would flatten the houses if they went any further.
— "Whoosh"
— "Bang bang!"
Several whistling arrows shot into the sky, emitting "crisp" sounds.
At the same time, those hot air balloons that heard the "whistling arrows" shot out whistling arrows in response...
The sound of "bang bang" was endless...
Like the chirping of nightingales... followed by the slow descent of nearly two hundred hot air balloons!
At noon... the sky was filled with dark clouds, and the atmosphere was suffocating.
In contrast... inside the stone city, wisps of cooking smoke... a scene of peace and tranquility, of course... apart from the "dark clouds" pressing down from the sky, the city and mountains within were also in turmoil!
The ten thousand strong army of Great Wei besieging the city... this was a major event, naturally... the leaders of the Shanyue here gathered together!
As if discussing how to respond... how to strengthen defenses...
But the atmosphere here was filled with "singing and laughter"... as if these Shanyue people never took Great Wei seriously.
Indeed...
Here in the mountains, one man guarding the pass can hold off ten thousand, let alone the stone city, even the outermost mountain paths, Cao's army could not reach.
"Come, this king toasts you generals!"
This Shanyue land was not large, but due to "peeking at the sky from the bottom of a well," the leaders here had long since called themselves kings. He even found it hard to understand... why would other Shanyue leaders choose to join the "Lu Family Army" when they could be mountain kings in these mountains?
In his opinion, dogs wouldn't go!
"Your Majesty, Cao's army outside the mountains has dispatched ten thousand troops, but... they can't even touch a single hair on our nose! Ridiculous, ridiculous!"
"Yes, how powerful Lu Xun was back then, yet he could do nothing to us. Can Great Wei's soldiers fight in mountain warfare?"
"Unless Cao Cao can fly in, our stone city is invincible!"
"Your Majesty, cheers... to Baiyue!"
The current Shanyue were once called "Baiyue." They were descendants of King Goujian of Yue. The story of King Goujian's forbearance, they recited and remembered at all times.
"Hahahaha..."
The Yue King listened and felt increasingly melancholic. He raised his wine cup again. "Come, toast the 'Three Thousand Yue Soldiers' who swallowed Wu!"
"Hahaha..."
A group of generals let out melancholic laughter again.
Just then.
"Your Majesty, Your Majesty... something is wrong, something is wrong..."
A Shanyue armored soldier rushed in... "Enemy attack... enemy attack!"
Enemy attack?
Originally... those who were feasting and speaking with high spirits were all stunned. You look at me... I look at you...
Clearly...
Clearly... all the mountain passes were heavily guarded, and the deployment of troops was personally arranged by the leaders. It could be said that one man guarding the pass could hold off ten thousand. How... how could there be an enemy attack?
"Which mountain pass has fallen?"
"Didn't I set up several lines of defense?"
"How could Cao's army break in? Tell me clearly, you son of a bitch!"
A general roared, and instantly... everyone in the room calmed down, especially the Shanyue King... after a brief look of shock, he calmed down.
No need to panic...
Cao's army couldn't break in. Even if a mountain pass fell, there were still many difficulties behind it. At worst... he could send people to push down giant stones to completely block that mountain pass.
If they don't come out of the mountains? The Shanyue can still live!
"Quick, reply to General Wulu!" The Shanyue King repeated, "Which mountain pass has fallen? Is there any support? What is the current situation?"
However, the armored soldier looked as if he had seen a ghost.
"Reply... reply to the Grand Commander... Cao's army... descended from the sky!"
"They... they are like countless nightingales above our heads, a vast expanse of blackness, the sky outside has turned dark!"
The sky?
Descending from the sky?
All the Shanyue leaders were a bit bewildered. The Shanyue King even grabbed the soldier by his sleeve, "Damn it, how dare you lie to me?"
"Nonsense, humans are not birds, how can they fly?"
As soon as the words fell...
Before the armored soldier could explain...
"Help, help..."
"Waaaa..."
Countless shouts and cries came from outside the door... and the sound grew louder... and louder!
Then...
With a "rumble...", something heavy was thrown down from the roof beams.
Before the Shanyue leaders could react, from top to bottom... a surging fire had already erupted, spreading continuously...
And this was just the tip of the iceberg of this fire.
The real fire dragon and flames had just begun!
...
...
The stone city was not large...
In the sky, densely packed, two hundred large flying balls were enough to cover the entire sky and earth.
It was also enough to make the stone city at noon turn pitch black.
Everywhere the flying balls passed, first came the sound of pottery jars breaking, and then... the ignited pottery jars were thrown down simultaneously.
As the fire seeds landed, they spread instantly, igniting every street and every house in the stone city... spreading like a prairie fire.
In the basin, the mountain wind was strong... the fire borrowed the wind's power, and the wind borrowed the fire's momentum, like a fire dragon, sweeping wildly!
Flames tens of feet long licked every eave, burning!
The roof tiles exploded violently, and tiles flew everywhere like hail, injuring more than a dozen people in an instant.
With a burst of explosions and a chorus of screams, people scrambled out of the burning courtyards, only to find... the stone city was a sea of fire everywhere!
Escape? Where could they escape to?
"Water?"
"Get water!"
The Shanyue people cried out. In their traditional beliefs, water was the bane of fire. If they couldn't escape, then... they would fight the fire!
Unfortunately...
Most of the houses in the stone city were built of wood, extremely flammable, and... the pottery jars thrown from the hot air balloons were filled with "whale oil"...
This "whale oil" was extremely resistant to burning... and could not be extinguished by water!
The fires caused by whale oil were invincible in this basin.
The Shanyue King clearly saw jars falling from the sky, then exploding... and being ignited by flames, burning everything.
And the flying balls in the sky grew lower and lower, like the nightmare of all Shanyue people.
"Escape... escape towards the east city gate!"
"Quick, run..."
Everyone panicked. At such a time, no one cared about status or hierarchy... everyone was wandering, at a loss, not knowing how to respond.
Of course, there were also brave ones... organizing archers to shoot at the flying balls from high ground.
But they found that... the bows and arrows could not penetrate the wrapped balloon sacs.
On the contrary... among these archers, many were engulfed by flames, becoming firemen, fleeing in all directions... the thick smoke was suffocating, and countless people were burned to death...
But more were suffocated by smoke than burned to death.
In the black smoke, it was difficult to breathe.
"Cough cough..."
The Shanyue King coughed desperately, "Open the city gate... open the city gate!"
He rode his horse, and his hooves trampled countless clansmen...
"Dong..."
As the city gate opened, countless Shanyue people fled from here, and then... entered the forest outside the city!
Because it was a basin, the stone city was surrounded by forests... it was easy to hide and evade in between!
Apparently, the Shanyue King soon realized the weakness of the flying balls, they were too big... and it was impossible to track and pursue everyone.
However...
He had thought too simply.
"Rumble rumble..."
As pottery jars continued to be thrown from the flying balls, the forest was also ignited... the entire basin quickly turned into a sea of fire!
The purpose of the flying ball team was never to burn the city... but to burn this mountain range!
"Ah..."
"Ah..."
The sounds of howling ghosts and wolves echoed from the basin, and everyone in it trembled with fear.
And as the fires raged on all sides, the Shanyue King found that... he... he had nowhere to go.
Boom... rumble!
In the eyes of helplessness, bewilderment, panic, and confusion, he and his people were covered by the flames!
The palace...
The halls...
Houses, city walls, everything turned into nothingness like a dream bubble.
And all this was because... they chose to resist Cao Wei, rather than submit to Cao Wei!
Now, no one could afford... the price of resisting Cao Wei!
...
...
After the flames burned...
Thin ashes scattered like fine rain... overlooking the entire mountain range, there were charred Shanyue people everywhere!
These Shanyue, historically known as "Sun Quan's Nightmare"...
These brave and skilled Shanyue.
No one could have imagined that in just one night... they, along with... their families and children, all perished!
"Gulp..."
Zhou Yu shook off the apocalyptic scene in his mind and turned to look at Lu Yu.
He considered himself to have led troops for many years and fought countless battles, yet he had never witnessed such a tragic scene.
Once, he followed the Little Hegemon Sun Ce to sweep across Jiangdong and had seen tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of casualties.
The battlefield had also been bloody!
But...
No one had ever committed such atrocities!
Zhou Yu found the sudden genocidal slaughter difficult to accept.
Even though the ones burned to death were, in his opinion, the extremely wicked Shanyue!
In contrast... Lu Yu...
A city turned into a sea of fire, with over a hundred thousand people cooked and killed in the city, why did Lu Yu not even blink an eye?
Could it be that a peerless god of slaughter, comparable to Bai Qi, the Lord of Wu'an in the pre-Qin era, was truly about to appear in the world!
Inside Wancheng.
Screams were incessant, and the heat waves could be felt even a thousand paces away by the Zhenbei Army.
Not long after, a nauseating aroma wafted from inside Wancheng.
Terrible...
It was too terrible. For a month, or even months, or a year... Zhou Yu would likely be trapped in this terror, in nightmares.
At this moment, he finally recalled how brutal? How terrifying was "Burning of Bowang Slope" as mentioned by Zhuge Kongming?
Zhou Yu subconsciously looked at Lu Yu...
Lu Yu felt a little embarrassed by his gaze.
"Governor Zhou, do you have to keep looking at me?"
Lu Yu reached into the rattan basket to feel for something...
Zhou Yu subconsciously trembled, fearing it was a whale oil jar. In fact, this rattan basket of Lu Yu did not contain any whale oil jars.
Finally, Lu Yu found something... it was a dried yellow croaker.
"Governor Zhou, are you hungry? Have some dried yellow croaker?"
Heh...
Zhou Yu gave a wry smile.
He narrowed his eyes and uttered deeply, "Lu Ziyu, are... are you a devil?"
"Are you deliberately letting me see the destruction of the Shanyue tribe overnight?"
Zhou Yu's tone carried a tremor.
"Heh heh..."
Hearing this, Lu Yu smiled, a uniquely cheerful smile. "First, let me answer Governor Zhou's first question. I am not a devil. On the contrary, I have always honored the 'Subduing the enemy without fighting' from Sun Tzu's Art of War. The strategies set for warfare often emphasize 'completeness.' What is completeness? Preservation is 'completeness'! Achieving victory with the smallest cost is completeness!"
"As Governor Zhou said, the Sun clan of Jiangdong is very strong. If they are not deterred in this way... then... these flying balls will burn the six commanderies of Jiangdong. At that time, it will be true devastation and true devilry!"
"But now, the matter of the Shanyue will quickly spread to Jiangdong. Sun Zhongmou does not want to surrender, but what about Queen Mother Wu? Sun Yi? The people of the seventy-two counties of the six commanderies of Jiangdong?"
"If you look at it this way, what I burned were just barbarians, the Yue people, not our Han people... From this perspective, I am not a devil... but rather a Bodhisattva who prevents the devastation of Jiangdong!"
Hoo...
Zhou Yu let out a long breath. Every word of Lu Yu's was like a heavy hammer striking directly at his heart.
If the stone city could be annihilated overnight...
Then... Kuaiji, Danyang, Yuzhang, Wu Commandery... also... also...
Lu Yu never offered Jiangdong a multiple-choice question, but a compulsory one.
Jiangdong had no choice!
Gulp...
Zhou Yu swallowed again.
Lu Yu slowly turned around, facing Zhou Yu, and continued, "I could have not let Governor Zhou see these things, and I could have directly dispatched the flying ball troops to burn Wu Commandery! If that were the case, the Sun clan of Jiangdong would not even have the chance to scorch the earth or surrender. He and the people of Jiangdong would turn to ashes... like the king of Shanyue in the stone city."
"But the reason I let Governor Zhou see this is because I believe that only you, Duke Zhou, can persuade Sun Zhongmou and Lu Zijing!"
"I, Lu Yu, want to ask Governor Zhou to be my envoy, and also ask Governor Zhou to persuade the Sun clan of Jiangdong to make the correct choice..."
"I can be Bai Qi, who buried thirty thousand surrendered soldiers, or I can be 'Mengchang,' who had three thousand retainers, was inclusive, and helped Great Wei absorb tens of thousands of people from Jiangdong!"
Speaking of this, Lu Yu reached out and patted Zhou Yu's shoulder, "The person who can make this choice is you!"
"The fate of Jiangdong rests in your hands, Duke!"
Finally, Lu Yu placed his hand in Zhou Yu's, narrowed his eyes, and smiled.
Lu Yu spoke lightly...
But for Zhou Yu, his mood was extremely heavy, "What a sharp sword in the hand..."
Heh...
Hearing this, Lu Yu smiled and replied, "Compared to that sentence, I prefer the former one..."
"Drunkenly lying on the knees of beauties!"
Once upon a time, Lu Yu had truly thought, if... if one day he unified this chaotic world for Cao Cao.
As an outsider, should he also learn from Fan Li, Zhang Liang, Shi Shouxin... retreat when things are going well, perhaps Cao Cao would enfeoff him as a King of Xianyu... give him a piece of land!
Besides power...
Money and beauties would be readily available!
Thinking about it carefully, such a life should be not bad...
History is cruel. Wen Zhong, who was killed by King Zhaoxiang of Qin after the "clever rabbit dies, the hunting dog is cooked, the flying bird is gone, the good bow is hidden," and Bai Qi, who was mentioned by Zhou Yu, also served as a reminder to Lu Yu.
After achieving fame and success... one should retreat wisely!
Lu Yu thought of this...
Meanwhile, Zhou Yu's expression remained heavy, "Lu Ziyu, if you were Lord Mengchang, it would be fine. If you were Bai Qi, how many more people would die in the world... 'Bones lie in the wilds, the sound of chickens is silent for a thousand miles!'"
"King Wei's poem?"
"King Wei's poem!"
"That sentence is not good..."
"Then... which sentence is good?"
"'Mountains are not weary of height, seas are not weary of depth... Duke Zhou coughs up his food, and the world submits!'"
As if in a rapid-fire exchange, Lu Yu and Zhou Yu spoke at an extremely fast pace!
...
...